Half-bridge circuits have been used as power switching output stages in various applications such as motor drives, electronic ballasts for fluorescent lamps and power supplies. The half-bridge circuits employ a pair of connected switching elements (e.g., field-effect transistors (FETs) or insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs)) that are placed across, for example, a DC high voltage power supply. The switching elements are driven by a driver integrated circuit (IC) to ensure proper operations of the switching elements.
In conventional techniques, when a switching element has a failure (e.g., a gate is shorted to a source or a drain), the driver IC cannot readily identify that switching element. As such, all drivers in the driver IC and their corresponding switching elements need to be stopped before the operations can be resumed, which can lead to significant time and power losses. Thus, there is a need in the art for a driver IC that can protect an individual driver when a failure occurs, while other drivers and switching elements continue operation.